


A Darkness Underwater

by Snagglefanged



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Bad Parenting, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Murder, F/M, Good Teachers, Grief/Mourning, I tag for a lot of horrific stuff given this was meant to be fluffy, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kiri-nin being Kiri-nin, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychological Trauma, bad teachers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 08:37:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16426055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snagglefanged/pseuds/Snagglefanged
Summary: Konoha has been sent a request from Kirigakure - for one of their teachers, to help Kiri's Academy become something better where children emerge from it without massive amounts of trauma. Iruka is the teacher Konoha's sending, and he'll grow closer to Kirigakure's Mizukage the longer he's there, while untangling a mess created out of all the pain a village has suffered.





	1. Littoral zone

"You wanted to see me, Rokudaime-sama?"

Hatake Kakashi glanced up from the pile of reports, looking mildly exasperated and a little pained. These expressions were a lot easier to make out these days, with two whole eyes to read expressions in. True, he still wore the mask that covered the lower half of his face, but those who knew him had long since worked out how to understand his expression regardless, and they now had somewhat more face to work with when doing so.

"Iruka.... enough of the -sama, please? I'm getting enough of that already," he pleaded. All this formality was getting on his nerves, and he was beginning to see why Tsunade had been in such a hurry to pass him the Hokage hat as soon as she could possibly do so. Admittedly, she had been forced to guide the village through some of the worst disasters in living memory, so she'd probably also felt that it was about time she got a chance to relax.

_I just have to do this until Naruto's old enough and mature enough to take my place,_ Kakashi reminded himself, but that thought wasn't entirely comforting. Naruto was... fearless, bold, inspiring, all of those things, yes, but maturity had never been high on his list of virtues, and it was going to take a lot more work and experience before he'd be ready to lead the village. _If he's not careful, Konohamaru will get there before he does, and he'll have to settle for being the Eighth Hokage, not the Seventh._

The question was not _whether_ Naruto would make it, though, but _when_ he would make it; it had been his dream for as long as Kakashi had known him, and Naruto wasn't one to give up on his goals, not even if the entirety of the shinobi world were to stand in his way. And Kakashi wanted him to get there, wanted it with all his heart, and he knew that the man standing before him now wanted that too.

It was not, however, about Naruto that he'd summoned Umino Iruka.

Kakashi coughed slightly, shuffled his papers, and located the most relevant one.

"We've had a request from Kirigakure."

"A request?" Iruka looked a little startled.

It would once have been unusual, true, for their knowledge of Kirigakure's desires to come from anything milder than a snarled demand or a plot wrenched from the lips of a captured spy, but those had been the old days, the ones that had cost many lives for all the shinobi villages. In the aftermath of the Fourth Great Ninja War, in which the villages had allied with one another against the greatest foe any of them had ever faced, a new age of peace was being slowly and cautiously built, one in which the villages communicated in words, not just in warfare.

"Yes. You've heard the stories, haven't you, about how their shinobi used to graduate from the Academy?"

"You mean... when they used to have to kill a classmate to graduate?"

"Yes." And that thought, as ever, brought back memories of Zabuza, the renegade Swordsman Kakashi had fought - in life, and in death. The man whose one bloody and desperate act had ended that system of graduation, forcing even Kirigakure to count the cost too high. "It's not like that now, of course, but the Mizukage remembers those days. She wrote to tell me that even if they no longer kill half of a graduating class, she's concerned that echoes of the old harsh system might still be lurking under the surface." And there, Kakashi had come to the reason for calling on Iruka. "She asked us to send someone with experience from our own Academy, to help examine their system and ensure it's been restructured so the shinobi coming out of it emerge without the kind of horrors in their minds they used to hold."

"And... you wanted... _me_ to go?" Iruka flushed a little, cheeks darkening. "Or am I here to suggest who I think ought to be sent?"

"You were right the first time," Kakashi informed him, his smile coming through in his voice. "You taught Naruto, and since he's still the world's hero, that will get you a bit of extra respect there. And I can't think of anyone better suited to making sure their system is kinder to its students."

"I - ah - thank you?" Iruka looked even more flustered there. He'd always been humble, so being put forward for any role in the spotlight seemed to come as a surprise to him, even when it shouldn't; he was a good teacher and a skilled ninja, and he deserved recognition.

"You'll be gone some months, at the least, but I won't ask you to go until the school year here has ended. That's a little over two months to prepare, isn't it? I know you won't want to interrupt your students' lessons part-way through a year, after all."

Kakashi didn't need his lost Sharingan to read Iruka, now. Iruka would be saddened at the thought of leaving his students, even after a school year, uncertain about going to another village, but... he would be thinking, as Kakashi had, about students murdered by their classmates, their friends, in a graduation that cost families their children and left the survivors haunted by what they'd done. He would understand why the Mizukage was so determined to be sure no traces of that blood-soaked system remained.

"After the school year, then," Iruka agreed, and much to Kakashi's consternation, he bowed as he said it.

"Don't... don't bow, all right?" One hand came up, rubbing the scar beneath his eye. Maybe he shouldn't have stopped covering it, Kakashi thought. Maybe with his old forehead protector in place, tilted at its old angle, he could persuade people to remember who he really was, who they'd known, instead of directing all these courtesies at a title that still sat uneasily upon his shoulders. "I'll let the Mizukage know when to expect you. I'm sure she'll be very grateful."

 

* * *

 

A lot of trouble had come from Konoha over the years. Madara, Obito, Orochimaru, Sasuke, that old meddler Danzō ; even once one set people like them aside and turned one's attention to Konoha's unquestioned heroes, one still found that a hero in Konoha might be another way of describing someone who had been a devastating foe to others. The current Hokage, for example, as well as his predecessor, had been staunch opponents in battle, as some from Kirigakure had learned, to their cost.

Now, though, it was not trouble that was expected to come from Konoha, but a solution. Terumī Mei, Fifth Mizukage, looked at the reply that had come to her from the Hokage's office. They were sending one of their best, Kakashi promised, someone who could help her to change everything.

And they needed that change, desperately. It had been years, now, since the graduation exams for Kirigakure's Academy had changed, but not everything had ended then, just because more of a class survived to seek their places as genin. Replacing the teachers en masse had not been an option - who would have replaced them? Active-duty shinobi taken away from their own work, costing the village strength? Shinobi, moreover, who had graduated in the old days and still carried those scars in their hearts?

Even a Mizukage couldn't change everything in one fell swoop, it seemed.

Still, just because it was difficult, didn't mean she was going to give up. She had endured those dark days, had hidden her strengths from those who would have despised her for them, until the time had been right for change, and then she had stepped forward, promising something better. Mei still remembered the faces of her classmates sometimes, even now, even when so many others she'd known had joined them among the ranks of the dead. They'd been children, just little boys and girls thrust into a world no child should have had to bear.

And they'd had families. Sometimes, on the bad nights, she remembered the face of a man carrying away his dead son - only nine, now never to grow older, just a nine-year-old boy who'd been good at sums and map-reading but not quite good enough with a blade, just a child who'd had a bad habit of talking with his mouth full but who would tell anyone who would listen about his dog and how brave and strong she was - and it had been the face of a man trapped in a waking nightmare. He hadn't wept, that man, that father who was a father no longer, not with how Kirigakure trained its shinobi to bury their hearts for the sake of the village, but his eyes... there had been a hell hiding in those eyes that Mei had never forgotten, and wasn't sure she ever would.

For the families of those who had died in the war, there was grief, and pain, but nothing like that hellish look. They had the memories of their kin as heroes, as people who had lived and fought and fallen doing what was right, for the sake of preserving their village and their world. There was some comfort for them; Mei had seen to that. Those lost to the war were not wasted or cast aside as though too weak to remember.

If Mei had anything to say about it, none in Kirigakure would ever again have to look at the world through such eyes as she remembered on that man. She would heal her village, that had caused such pain to all, not least itself, and they would move forward into a world where Kirigakure's children were not afraid, didn't wake in the night gripped by nightmares made worse by being true.

And one of the very first steps, then, had to be ensuring that each new generation of shinobi carried something better in their hearts than the last. That kind of plan had to start at the very beginning, in the Academy. If the students were taught without shadows of old bloodshed darkening their hearts, they would know the kind of hope and fearless joy that would transform them into beacons lighting the path into the future the village truly needed. It was why she'd reached out to Konoha; the kind of teaching that had created Konoha's young heroes, like Uzumaki Naruto, would be what she needed to change Kirigakure's future.

It hadn't only created heroes, of course, but no system was without some flaws, and no village had taught only shining paragons without also giving rise to some who turned their faces from the light. The important part was that there be some light to find in the first place.

If it was to be found anywhere, Mei thought, they could surely find it in the man Konoha had chosen to send. Umino Iruka, chūnin, who had personally taught Uzumaki Naruto. Those were the facts as conveyed by the Hokage's message. Kirigakure's intelligence services, when consulted, had turned up reports of a young man with some skill, and some verifiable successes on missions, but there was nothing like the dread attached to the names of other Konoha notables. So this Iruka was competent, but for one reason or another had never attained fame, and was apparently willing to remain in a field of duty in which battlefield prowess might never be noticed.

That was interesting. Also of interest was the promise to send him once Konoha's school year was over; either Kakashi liked the man enough not to uproot him before then, and Iruka would not have wanted to leave his students, or he was so skilled a teacher that no-one else could have taken his place for the last month or so of classes, or both. Either of those options were promising, and the hope that it might be both together was even more promising.

The file that had been put together included a photograph, and Mei peered at it. Iruka was smiling a little in his picture, in a way that suggested his face just naturally fell into that expression more readily than a frown, and there was something open and earnest in the look in those eyes. Appearances could be deceiving, of course, but Mei had heard nothing yet to suggest that Iruka's looks hid anything but the personality one expected upon seeing them. He looked honest, good-hearted even, and if he was even a little like his picture, she would be very glad to have him here.

Mei shuffled her papers again, and reminded herself to speak to her aide about security clearances and living accommodations for the guest they'd soon have. Yet again, she found herself wishing she still had Ao there to help her; he'd always made a point of doing things as they should be done, which had sometimes been vexing, but had at least always given her complete confidence that if he was doing something, it would be done right. Her new aide meant well, but she wasn't quite as meticulous as Ao had been, and she needed a great deal more practice to hone her organisational skills.

The war had cost Kirigakure many talented shinobi, from the highest ranks to the lowest, and everyone left behind could only try their best to step up and fill the gaps as well as they could manage. Mei sighed. She just needed to be a little more patient, she reminded herself; her aide showed every sign of becoming a reliable assistant, she just wasn't used to the pressure of being responsible for so many functions of the Mizukage's office, and she would grow more accustomed to her duties if given a little more time.

 

* * *

 

Iruka didn't want to leave his students behind. Even getting them through another school year successfully wasn't much consolation, not compared to the chance to shepherd them through until graduation. So many of them had already endured so much upheaval - more than half the families they'd come from had lost one or more members to the war, and the children left behind were still carrying that grief. He'd tried to be an understanding ear, a supportive friend to his students, because he knew how that felt. He knew what it was like to be left without the people he'd loved most, and it was such a lonely feeling that he didn't want to see any of them have to carry it alone.

He hadn't always known what to do, in that area; there had been students in the past who had come into his classroom lost and alone and in pain, and he hadn't known how to help them. He hadn't done enough for them, back then, but he'd learned from that, and he never wanted to let a student down that way again. He could do better now, he was sure of it, he could help them so much more.

Leaving these students behind felt a little like he'd be failing them all over again, but... there were other teachers here who could help them. They wouldn't be alone, and he'd already begun to show them how to reach out to each other for the support and friendship they needed.

So many things could have been avoided in the past if more children had been given the chance to learn that, after all, Iruka thought.

These children would be all right. They were living in a village that was learning from its past.

The children of Kirigakure, on the other hand... were clearly not all right, not if the Mizukage herself had asked for help for them. They had to need this desperately for a teacher to be requested from a completely different village. And Iruka had heard stories enough of Kirigakure's past that he could imagine how deep the scars surely ran.

In the end, knowing that there were children out there who needed him so badly was all it really took. If he'd refused to help, he would no longer have been himself.

He'd said goodbye to everyone he knew, especially the students, packed his things, and then, just as he'd promised, Iruka left Konoha behind.

At the gate, Izumo and Kotetsu had given him a cheery farewell, and 'good luck' wishes, and he'd done his best to memorise that moment, with the last truly familiar faces he was likely to see for a while.

(The masked figure that he was vaguely aware was following him didn't count; that one turned back after a while, doubtless to give the Hokage the news that Iruka was safely on his way, and you weren't supposed to try to recognise them anyway.)

It had been a while since Iruka had left the village for any real length of time, other than the war; his job had kept him within its walls unless he was taking the children out on field trips and survival exercises in its general vicinity. The world had changed a little since the days in which he'd been on field duty as a shinobi, carrying out actual missions, and it wasn't just for the sake of caution that Iruka was looking around constantly. Everything was new again; it was a little exciting, actually.

The little tea house along the way hadn't been there before, not that Iruka could recall, as he stopped there to take a break from his travels. A sign on the wall proudly advertised snacks and tea blends favoured by several different nations. This, then, was what peace looked like; people coming and going freely between their homes so often that even little places like this catered to the longing for familiar tastes in a different land.

It made Iruka think for a little while about what to choose; he could preview the tastes of his destination, perhaps, but those were more likely to be found in their authentic form if he waited until he was actually in the Land of Water to choose them. He could try something from somewhere else, too, if he wanted to, but in the end he settled for his usual favourites. None of them were likely to taste quite the same if he could get them in Kirigakure, so he figured he might as well have them while he still could.

He was just like all the other travellers who came through here, in the end, Iruka thought, a little ruefully; the taste of home was always the first thing he looked for. Hopefully, though, he would still be able to find something in Kirigakure that would be worth savouring.

With his break over, Iruka paid and moved on, still thinking about home, and about how different Kirigakure might be.

He set a good pace, but didn't push himself, and soon enough he was presenting his documents to a man with Kiri's symbol on him and the expression, hauntingly familiar, of a man who was going to have to do paperwork very shortly as a result. The scarred hands that sifted through Iruka's permits looked as though they'd have been more comfortable wrapped around a sword's hilt, but the man was polite enough in a tired sort of way.

He waved Iruka through, giving him back the documents, and promised that someone would be along shortly to guide Iruka into the village.

That 'someone' was a young man, perhaps around Naruto's age, but with eyes ten centuries older, who made no conversation and responded to Iruka's careful pleasantries with vague grunts of acknowledgement. This, then, was probably one of the ones who'd had to grow up too fast, whose childhoods had been touched by the last gory shadows of the old days, before the current Mizukage had taken over. Iruka decided not to take his attitude personally; there would probably be more like him in the village.

At least his guide was competent; even when the thick mists swirled around them and the way forward became invisible, Iruka's guide walked confidently, knowing the path without any need for landmarks. Alone, Iruka would have been hopelessly lost by now.

As it was, though, he trailed after his guide in the mist that muffled sound and gave the world a strange and timeless quality. He could have been adrift in a dull grey void, where the past, present and future all blended into an insignificant memory of a concept that no longer applied at all. Iruka found that he was mentally counting his own footsteps, just to have some confirmation that he was moving at all, and wondered if this was part of what had made Kirigakure what it was.

Oh, obviously it had determined the village's name, just as Konoha's name had come from the surrounding forests, but it wasn't just the name. Mists like this made him think of secrecy. They suggested a way to misdirect intruders and eliminate them one by one while they struggled to find the correct path. And perhaps it was nerves, or lending too much credence to old stories, but it also made Iruka think about things done inside a village by and to its own people. What kind of cruel things might someone do, he wondered, if they knew that even their closest neighbours wouldn't see them do it? If one could walk down one side of a street and never know what was happening on the other side?

It wouldn't be like that now, though, of course. Kirigakure had participated in the alliance that had fought so hard to save the world, and in the aftermath of that war they were still participating, offering open and honest contributions to the welfare of the shinobi world. They weren't the monsters out of legends, just people who'd gone through some awful things. While a little bit of Iruka might always be five years old and listening with terrified awe to stories about Konoha's enemies, he was an adult now and could understand that the world was much more complicated than any story like that could convey.

_They probably grew up hearing stories like that about us, too,_ Iruka thought suddenly. Konoha had always had fearsome warriors, and while they'd been heroes to him, they must have been the stuff of nightmares to others. He wondered if his greatest heroes had been described as merciless, bloodthirsty killers here, and the thought was deeply unsettling to him. Certainly, his heroes had won many battles, and that had always been right and fair, but what about the people they'd defeated? Those people had probably had friends and families, and even if they were in the wrong, those close to them wouldn't have wanted to think that.

They'd have believed their dead to be heroes, too. Heroes, cut down by villains from afar...

Iruka had always been a good shinobi of Konoha, loyal and proud of that. He'd always done his best to complete his missions. But there was something in him that didn't love violence, that wanted to reach out and understand - wasn't that why he'd been reassigned to the Academy? And now that part of him was reminding him that, to a child whose parents had gone out to fight and never come back, those parents would probably always be heroes, no matter who they'd fought or why.

There was a little bit of guilt involved in looking at everyone he'd looked up to all his life and thinking about them like this, when he knew them personally and knew that they weren't like that, knew they were good people, but... perhaps this was why he'd been sent here in the first place. Perhaps Kakashi had chosen him precisely because he did want to understand others and share their feelings, because an outsider who didn't care what people thought wouldn't have been any kind of good teacher for this job.

Ahead, the mist was clearing a little, and Iruka could see a great wall, and a gate into the village of Kirigakure. There was a welcoming party assembled there, and one of them was the Mizukage herself.

His first impression of her, as she met his gaze, was of a strength of personality so powerful he could actually feel it. His second impression, as she smiled at him, was that she was even more beautiful than people had said she was. Close to his own height, she actually gave the impression of being taller until he'd come nearer, and her smile warmed him right to his bones.

"So, you are Umino Iruka? Welcome to Kirigakure. Please, come with me. We're glad you've come, truly."

"Thank you, Mizukage-sama. I'm glad to be here." He meant it, too. Now that he was actually here, all his speculations and odd thoughts seemed foolish. Iruka smiled back at her, relieved at how normal everything seemed.

The Mizukage urged him to follow her, but as he did, he nearly bumped into a young man with glasses and something very large on his back that was presumably a sword. This would be Chōjūrō, then, the Mizukage's bodyguard, last of the Seven Ninja Swordsmen. For a member of such a fearsome group, there wasn't much that was intimidating about him other than his pointed teeth, and the impression those gave was overshadowed rapidly by the hasty and slightly flustered apology he gave Iruka, shifting aside to keep his sword out of the way.

"No harm done," Iruka informed him, quietly cheerful, and Chōjūrō's answering smile - still a little embarrassed but also relieved - suggested that, as long as Iruka took care never to give the impression of a threat to the Mizukage's wellbeing (an impression he had no intention of giving, since it was also something he had no intention of _being_ ) he might actually find himself on friendly terms with Chōjūrō sooner or later.

It was a nice thought; making friends here would make his stay a lot more pleasant and less lonely than it might otherwise have been, and when someone seemed as obviously nice as Chōjūrō appeared to be, based on first impressions, Iruka was inclined to want someone like that for a friend in any case.

Walking beside Chōjūrō, he followed the Mizukage into the village, his eyes drawn now and then to the way her hair swayed with her movements, brilliantly-coloured even in the dimmed light filtering through the surrounding mist. She was pointing out landmarks, however, and Iruka obligingly examined each one as she gestured to them, doing his best to memorise which ones lay in each direction. He was going to need those, if he wanted to find his way around an unfamiliar village with any degree of success.

He was doing his best, too, to make appropriate comments, though this wasn't actually all that difficult; Kirigakure was very different to Konoha, but there was a kind of stark, lonely beauty to its tall towers with their curved walls and masses of greenery on top. Each of the major buildings seemed, even from this angle, to have some kind of garden. Much of it was probably for food and for the growing of medicinal herbs - in an island area like this, Iruka suspected that the people here were reluctant to sacrifice even areas of land already used for housing, if those areas could also be used to grow things they needed.

Of course, some of it might actually have been purely aesthetic vegetation, and if one were up that high, perhaps one got to see over the mists? There would be people up there, standing amidst a small wealth of greenery, looking down into a world blanketed in mist so thoroughly that the streets below might as well not have existed at all.

Caught up in thoughts like these, he was honestly surprised when the buildings they were approaching looked absolutely nothing like how he'd envision any village's Academy, which was where he had to admit he'd been expecting this tour to take them. This area looked... residential?

And indeed, that thought was confirmed as Mei gestured to one of those buildings. "There's someone waiting inside to show you to the apartment we've set aside for you, Iruka-san," she informed him, still with such flawless courtesy that Iruka felt like someone who might actually have been important, from the way he was being treated. "We'll send someone to guide you to the Academy when you're ready, but you've had a long journey, and ought to be given a chance to rest."

He was Kirigakure's valued guest, then, and the village apparently intended to offer him its full hospitality. Of course they needed him for something, but gestures like these told Iruka that their bringing him in was done gratefully, not begrudgingly. It was nice, knowing that, and Iruka smiled a little, going a bit pink at the consideration he was being offered.

"Ah, thank you, Mizukage-sama, I'll get to work as soon as possible."

And even as she left, Iruka watched her go, before stepping inside, where a gangly adolescent whose hitai-ate caught the light oddly, as if it had been dented in the past and then only mostly straightened out again, beckoned for him to follow.

"Up this way," the boy told him, and led him to a door with a '14' on it. "This one's yours, here's your key, I'll be back in the morning to show you where to go and somebody'll drop some food off for you, too. Not allergic to anything, right?"

"No, I'm not," Iruka answered, unlocking the door, but he didn't get a chance to say anything else in response.

"Cool, see ya." The boy trotted away without waiting to hear if Iruka needed anything else.

However, looking into the apartment, Iruka realised he probably wouldn't need anything else; it was quite small, but everything inside was in a good condition. Touring it didn't take him very long, but it did leave him with the impression that everything he might have needed had been carefully catered for.

And someone with a sense of whimsy had clearly been involved in the preparations; when Iruka peeked into the little kitchen, there was a small cake on the counter with the words 'Welcome To Kiri' on it, and a couple of smiling faces beneath. One of those faces had pointy little fangs, and Iruka laughed, but he also noticed the poison testing strips, still wrapped in a protective coating, that stuck out of his cake like bonus decorations, and he wasn't sure what to think of those.

Were they a warning? An insult? Who had put the cake here in the first place? Whoever had done it, they'd clearly been in the loop about who would be staying here, which suggested they had some connection to the Mizukage's office. The cake didn't seem quite her style, for some reason, but he also doubted that she'd have let anyone know where he'd be staying unless she thought it was all right for them to know that.

Iruka eyed the smiling faces on the cake, and decided to take the poison test strips as a kind of wry acknowledgement of past tensions between their villages. _Hey, we both know this is unusual,_ he imagined the giver telling him, _and you might be a bit worried about what we're going to do to you, and I don't blame you for that, so here's something to settle any worries you have about the food here._ A smile crept back onto his face. Someone with a whimsical sense of humour would have supplied the cake, so it was probably not too surprising that they'd express any thoughtful impulses in a whimsical way too.

Besides, the cake smelled nice, and if there really was anything to worry about, someone would probably make that clearer to him eventually. He'd be as much on his guard as any trained shinobi ought to be when assessing his environment, but he wasn't going to lie awake at night worrying over what was probably nothing.

Iruka picked the testing strips out of the cake, and used one of them on it, just in case. All clear. He cut a piece to try right now, and put the rest of it into the little fridge, which he noted already had some basic food supplies inside. Whoever was supposedly going to bring him food later apparently didn't just mean ordinary groceries, since he had those here. It was probably an extension of what the Mizukage had said about his resting after his journey; the cake might not have seemed her style, but telling someone to drop off something ready-made for his dinner sounded about right, he thought.

The Mizukage...

_Terumī Mei._

Now that he'd met her, now that he'd actually spent even a little time around her, Iruka was beginning to understand why this might be the woman a village would look to as the one to take it out of a violent and tragic past into a more peaceful future. She was so courteous, so welcoming, but she'd also been strong enough to fight in the thick of the last war and survive. She radiated something that wasn't just warmth, but also conviction, the kind of strong will and determination a leader needed to possess. And his impression of her beauty, irrelevant as it was, remained as strong as it had been from the moment he'd first seen her in person.

Iruka sat down, still contemplating the Mizukage. Someone who could care so much for the children of her village that she'd set aside traditional boundaries of pride to ask for help in teaching them was someone he could respect wholeheartedly, and he was getting the feeling that staying here was going to be no hardship at all.

He took a bite of cake - it was delicious, and so obviously fresh that it had probably been placed in the apartment after he'd set foot in the village, between his arrival at the gate and the end of the tour that had brought him to the front door. Someone had worked very quickly to get this hospitable little gesture in place. If he ever found out who it was, he'd have to thank them for it.

Maybe he'd mention it to the Mizukage, if she decided to speak with him again? No, he decided, that was far too inconsequential a detail to trouble the leader of a village with, even when delivered as gratitude rather than as a complaint. If he had to speak to someone in her office about it, he could speak to an assistant, someone whose job was actually to deal with smaller details like those. Maybe he'd even find the person responsible among her assistants? It did seem like a suitable position for someone to be in who might combine enough access to information that they'd know, and enough freedom to do whimsical things that they might actually decide on something like this.

Whoever it was, they'd done something nice for him, and he appreciated it.

It wasn't too much longer before his dinner arrived, delivered by an absolutely tiny girl, almost certainly a genin, with a mass of black curly hair decorated all in blue beads. She seemed delighted to have a task like this, and Iruka hoped there were more children like this awaiting him. He'd be able to deal with the rowdy and troublesome ones, surely, but there was something that warmed his heart so much about the kind-hearted and merry ones in particular. There was an innocence to them that all too often was lost far too early in the life of a shinobi, but when Iruka was around, he hoped that he could find a way to help them hold onto some of it, even through the hardships to come.

They didn't have to be completely untouched by the world, that was never going to be a realistic outcome, but if they could hold onto their ideals and shape their beliefs to survive the process of growing up, they'd be better and happier people for it. It was the people who'd lost all their ideals who tended to be in the most pain, and who caused the most pain to others. If Iruka could teach any of the children he encountered how to hold firm to their ideals and truly believe they could, with their own hands, make things better, then he could spare them that, and know he'd given the world a precious gift into the bargain.

He'd done his best to accomplish that in Konoha. Now, he hoped to do his best in Kirigakure too, for as long as he was here to help.


	2. Pelagic zone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iruka gets his first sample of what it's like in Kirigakure's Shinobi Academy. Spoiler: not good.

Iruka's picture had not done him justice, Mei thought. It had been a formal greeting, so of course there'd been more reserve there, but she was used to that, and she'd been able to see beneath it, and get some insight into who he really was. The formalities hadn't hurt matters, though, since they'd proven that Iruka had all the manners she could possibly have wanted, without being overly stiff about it. A little nervous, a bit careful, but so utterly sincere; it had all come together into quite a charming impression of a good man, one who would be a good influence on those around him.

All of the subordinates she'd assigned to help him so far had reported the same thing, confirming that they'd got a good impression of him too. It was a promising start.

She'd sent a messenger bird as soon as the tour had ended, to tell the Hokage that Umino Iruka had indeed arrived safely in Kirgakure; it was only polite to communicate on things like this, and Mei made a point of keeping things polite. She would probably send more messages over the course of Iruka's stay, though less frequently, with some manner of updates, but she anticipated those being positive reports as well.

When Iruka returned to Konoha, if all went well, he would be preceded by enough good news that his Hokage would know he'd done a good job and be able to recognise him for it accordingly. And commendations were their own kind of currency for a shinobi; one's reputation meant everything to the confidence others placed in one's abilities. It might be a little less vital to a teacher than to a shinobi doing active field missions, but it would doubtless still serve Iruka well.

If nothing else, when Mei pictured Iruka trying to deal with the parents of his students, having approval of his skills as expressed by more than one village leader would surely quiet down any qualms those parents might have. This would, therefore, be to his benefit, and she was glad of that. An 'everyone wins' situation was the best kind, if it could be accomplished.

She was aware, though, that not all of her thoughts were focused on his teaching abilities. He was a good-looking man, a polite one, and a friendly one. She liked all of those attributes, especially when they were accompanied by competence. It wasn't just as a Mizukage that she approved of the finer qualities of some, and she knew it.

Still, it wasn't exactly feasible to do anything about that approval; their positions would make that a little awkward, perhaps, and she would do nothing to endanger the agreement that had brought him here, not when it was so important to all of the children in the Academy. Besides, she wasn't even sure how well their personalities might connect with greater opportunities to spend time around one another; the initial feelings had been positive, but first impressions were a very shallow sort of connection.

No, it would be nice if she were to get along with him, but Mei knew she shouldn't think about it any further than that, especially before knowing him a little better than she did now. She had responsibilities, and she wasn't the kind of woman who would shirk those over a few stray thoughts about a virtual stranger.

Mei sighed, shook her head at her own foolishness, and made a note to send someone around in the morning to show Iruka the Academy.

And then there was only the paperwork to go back to; just one more stack and she could go home and get some sleep. There had been so much of it to do when she'd first risen to her position, and there was still a lot, but she was managing it better now that she'd found trustworthy subordinates to sort through most of it first and divide it into things that needed detailed reading and discussion, things that needed urgent attention, things that could probably wait, things that were likely to be unimportant... it did mean that Mei wound up reading reports about other reports, but at least seeing lists of summaries first let her keep everything organised and decide what really had to be done.

Sometimes, defending and guiding a village meant leading its shinobi into battle. Sometimes it meant endless meetings about funding for all the essentials required to keep the village fed. And sometimes it was report after report after report of missions carefully assessed so that the village's ninja got missions enough to support themselves without being asked to do things beyond their abilities. Those weren't the glamorous tasks, but they were all the more important for the village Mei wanted Kirigakure to become, one where peace and prosperity replaced the threat of war.

It was worth it, for that. Everything was worth it, for that.

Even if her thoughts did sometimes stray to the idea of another life she might have had, this was the life she had now and she had to deal with that.

 

* * *

 

The birds were different in Kirigakure. Familiar songs failed to greet Iruka as he woke, the morning after his arrival, and the ever-present mist dimmed the jaunty rays of sunlight that ought to have come streaming in through a bedroom window. It had made things a little confusing, at first, waking up in the comfort of a bed but without any of the things that ought to have gone along with that - a few dazed 'where am I' moments before his brain finished waking up and reminded him that he wasn't in Konoha anymore.

It felt strange, even once he was awake and getting ready for the day. The habits of years spent in one place with a set routine weren't things he could shake off at a moment's notice, after all. Still, he was staying in comfort and doing something important. He'd get over it.

The little genin with the blue beads in her hair arrived not long after Iruka had finished eating his breakfast, and informed him in her tiny whisper of a voice that she was supposed to show him the way to the Academy.

"Lead on, then," he told her, with the most reassuring smile he could muster.

The Academy was not quite like Konoha's; of course, the shapes of all the buildings here differed, but this one seemed a little more ominous somehow, as though it still held the memory of the sad and bloody things done inside it years ago. Shaking off that impression, Iruka followed his little guide to the office of the Academy's headmaster.

He was so _ordinary_ looking. That was unsettling, in a way. The man looked... normal, like anyone his age that Iruka might have passed on a street somewhere. He might have been forty, or sixty, or somewhere in between, but it was difficult to be certain. Only his hitai-ate told the world he was anything more than a civilian... and his eyes. It was only once Iruka saw his eyes that the impression of mundane normality began to slip away.

They were not the eyes of a civilian, or even of most shinobi. Those eyes were dark and without anything that might have distinguished them from the eyes of any other man, true, but the expression in those eyes was so flat, so empty of emotion, that Iruka felt a chill run down his spine. This was the kind of man who could have taught at an Academy in which children fought each other to the death in order to graduate, then. This was the kind of man who could have watched students at their lessons, known half of them would be dead in only a few years, and not been torn apart by that knowledge.

Not the headmaster in those days, apparently, as somewhere during the small talk Iruka would later barely remember participating in, the man had mentioned the names of past headmasters, and the years they'd spent in that position, but he'd been teaching all this time.

Oh, the headmaster sounded respectful enough of the Mizukage, promised that all of the teachers would cooperate with Iruka's efforts, but the deepest impression Iruka had formed of him all the same was that of a man who'd buried his heart a long time ago and now ran off a cold mechanism of duty and habit.

If this was what the staff were like here, Iruka thought, he was glad Kakashi had sent him; this place needed all the help it could get.

It was a little better once he visited one of the classrooms, though, his arms and those of his guide now laden with files for his later perusal. The woman in that room was younger, not so cold.

"Class, a moment, this is Konoha's Umino Iruka, who has been sent here to work with us for a while," she said, her voice bubbly and cheerful. "Everyone, say 'Good morning, Iruka-sensei!' You'll be good and learn everything he teaches, won't you?"

The chorus of greetings was the unenthusiastic drone of children everywhere when prompted to say something, as was their 'yes, sensei' to the teacher's question. That part was so utterly familiar that Iruka had to try not to laugh.

He stayed there a little longer, listening as the students were taught their histories - which sounded considerably different to Konoha's version of some of those events, but he knew better than to argue about that. One of the boys was so obviously trying not to cry as the teacher discussed the most recent war that Iruka was certain he must have lost at least one parent to it. There were children in Konoha who responded the same way when those battles were described, while around them their peers thrilled at the thought of fierce battles, acts of heroism in the face of peril, and awe-inspiring powers unleashed upon terrible enemies.

It was easy to find it exciting if one's loved ones and heroes were still alive, but harder if they numbered amongst those who hadn't made it through the incredible odds that defined the stories of the survivors.

Iruka wanted to comfort the boy, but he suspected doing so would backfire when it came from somebody the students had only just met, and especially in front of the boy's peers. Already he was trying to put on a brave face, and it would have shattered the fragile dignity of the very young to draw attention to his emotional state.

_Later,_ Iruka promised himself. He'd speak to the boy later, if he could, hear him out, and try to help him when the child's pride was no longer at stake and the Academy's students had grown more comfortable with Iruka's presence here. Maybe he'd be able to do some good there, once he was in a position to speak more freely with the children. And maybe his role here had been intended only as one in which he would help write out teaching guidelines and deliver advice about how much pressure was too much to place upon the shoulders of students, but he couldn't in good conscience avoid getting to know the children themselves along the way. After all, it was only by trying to understand what they needed and the unique difficulties they faced that he'd really be able to decide on the best course of action when it came to how they should be taught; just giving them a cursory look and then making assumptions would do none of them any good, and might actually make things worse than they were already.

With that in mind, Iruka took care to keep his mouth shut for now, and offered only polite responses where necessary as he watched the classroom dynamics at work here. He felt a jolt of stunned familiarity at seeing a boy up the back with blond hair and lines on his cheek, but - no, those weren't whisker-marks. Those were scars. Something had clawed that boy's face open at some point, and he was probably lucky to still have a face at all. Still, just for a moment, listening to the sound of children answering questions, Iruka had felt as though he could have been back in Konoha, teaching the same classes he'd taught years ago, when Naruto had still been the Academy's troublemaker instead of Konoha's hero.

It wasn't quite the same, though; the children of Kirigakure pronounced their words a little differently, so that once he got past the familiar tone, every sentence was a reminder to him of where he was, and there was a certain wariness to them all that most students their age back in Konoha never had. They hadn't even been born during Kirigakure's darkest days, but - their parents had. Their teachers had. Every adult involved in their lives still bore the scars of those days, and the children would learn from the example of the adults. In much the same way, he had to admit to himself, that the children of Konoha had once learned to shun Naruto because of the feelings of their parents and other adults in their lives.

It seemed that every time Iruka turned around, he found something different in Kirigakure - but still familiar, like a reflection in a darkened mirror. The specifics differed, but there were always some similarities to be found, if he just looked hard enough.

When the class ended, the teacher looked around at her students, and invited them to come and speak to Iruka if they wished - "If you'll agree to it, of course?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes, of course," Iruka said easily. He saw most of the students stream past him, unwilling to give up any of their time even for the novelty of a teacher from Konoha, but some stayed, and came to cluster around Iruka. The boy who'd nearly cried about the war wasn't among them, but the blond boy with the scarred face was.

This close, it was easier to see how he differed from Naruto, with only one half of his face marked, and with narrow bright green eyes, but he was as bold as Naruto might have been in demanding answers as he asked loudly, "Why're you even here? Shouldn't you be back in Konoha where you belong?"

"Shh, you're gonna get in trouble again!" one of the girls whispered urgently, jabbing the boy in the side with her elbow and glancing nervously in the direction of the teacher.

"So what? I don't care, I wanna know why he's here!"

"No, it's all right," Iruka put in hastily, before this could escalate and force him to find out why the girl had been so anxious about discipline from even so friendly and cheerful-seeming a teacher. There were probably reasons, but if he wanted to know, he could ask about the Academy's policies and find out that way, instead of getting a sudden demonstration. "I don't mind telling you. The truth is, I'm here to find out what this Academy is like, compared to the one back home. Your Mizukage invited me to come and do that."

That got suitable expressions of surprise and respect from most of the students, but the scarred boy just scoffed. "The Mizukage? My Papa says she's a - _mmph_!" His words were cut off abruptly as something like a mass of sticky slime wrapped itself around his face, covering his mouth, making him claw desperately at it in a vain attempt to free himself.

" _Watch your tongue_ ," the teacher snapped, all the bubbly friendliness gone from her voice. "You've been warned before about that kind of disrespect."

The slime dissolved, dripping sullenly down the boy's clothes, and he took a deep breath, eyes flashing with resentment.

"Now you've done it," muttered the girl who'd given the warning before. "You never listen, do you?"

Iruka felt a little sick. A jutsu like that could easily have suffocated the boy, if it had been left in place much longer. And what was worse, nobody but him seemed at all surprised by what had just happened, which meant that it was so routine that none of the children found it remarkable. This was one of the things he was going to have to do something about. It was also something he was going to have to find out more about, and learn why it had happened in the first place, because he hadn't read that teacher as any kind of threat before this, and she was already back to looking as benevolent as she had been before the incident.

"Why don't you go play?" he suggested to the children. "I'll be here a while, so if you do have any questions, I'll be able to answer them later."

Once the students had filed out, he approached their teacher. "You know why I'm here, don't you?"

"Yes, of course, we were all briefed on that," she said cheerfully.

"...You could have killed that boy."

She actually looked shocked. "Not with that duration. And it's much more permeable over the nose than the mouth."

" _Why_?"

The teacher sighed. "Could I kill my students? Technically, yes. Would I? No. But they either learn to hold their tongues now, or they learn it more painfully later on. And the consequences don't just affect them. Mizukage-sama is more lenient, but... not everyone is, and if they cost their team their lives, or die themselves, because they didn't know when to stop talking out in the field, then they're gone for good. I'd use tape, but the jutsu costs me only chakra, and I can cancel it immediately, without taking the time to pull a lot of tape away."

It all seemed to make logical sense, if one approached the topic from her perspective, but Iruka still felt as though everything was completely askew. Something about her tone prompted him to prod at the topic a little further, and he asked carefully, "When you say more lenient...?"

"More lenient than others were. There was a class here, once, that I recall, where a student expressed sentiments that were considered treasonous. He... disappeared. So did his parents. So did his teacher, in the investigation into where he learned those sentiments, and the whole class was interrogated to see if they shared his views." She was rubbing the back of one hand with the fingers of the other as she spoke, and when Iruka looked closer, he saw what looked like... _burn scars_?

"I... see." That was all he could manage to say, and then he had to excuse himself. He had a lot to think about, and he wanted to be alone while he did it.

He'd known that everyone here would be dealing with the remnants of the past, he'd been thinking about that constantly, but somehow he'd failed to imagine anything quite like this. This had reached out and grabbed him as suddenly and suffocatingly as that jutsu had caught the boy with the scars on his face. In hindsight, it had been that suddenness that had affected him more than almost everything else there. Everything had seemed so normal, and then it hadn't been, and someone he thought he'd already got an accurate read on had changed, just like that.

There was her story, too - she'd said the teacher had disappeared, so it was likely she'd been one of the students, whose classmate and teacher had both vanished, who'd been questioned forcibly about something with such terrible consequences if the wrong answer was given. Was it any wonder, then, that she might react abruptly to seemingly harmless things like the mouthiness of a student? Children tended to speak thoughtlessly, that was their nature, but in a place like this, so many must have learned to stifle that part of their nature in order to survive.

Iruka had a sudden flash of memory that offered him the image of the Hokage faces covered in paint, and Naruto having to clean them again after his prank, and he wondered what kind of awful things would have happened if Naruto had tried something like that here. It was entirely possible that Naruto would never have survived to show the true strength of his heart and become the hero others esteemed so highly now. What kind of heroes had died here in Kirigakure before they could ever show who they truly were?

There was no way Iruka could have turned his back on his task, not now, even though just thinking about the sheer depth of the wounds he'd be trying to help heal daunted him and made him wonder if he could ever really be good enough to make a difference. He wanted to go home, even while knowing that his conscience would never allow that.

So, what was the first step? He had to break this down, do this one small thing at a time, or be overwhelmed by it. And the first step was to keep observing, over the next few days, read all of the paperwork he'd been given, speak to the students... Only by understanding the situation fully could he ever hope to be a part of changing it. He'd known that already, had reminded himself of it before this, but only now had he come to discover just how many things he might be called upon to try to understand in the process.

Iruka sighed, and looked around. He'd found a spot to sit on top of an Academy roof, and he'd thought himself completely alone here, but from the sounds he was hearing, somebody was climbing up to join him.

A shock of bright blond hair appeared first, and then the scarred boy hauled himself up over the edge to peer critically at Iruka.

"Are you hiding or something?"

"No, I'm not. Just... thinking. What's your name?" Iruka asked, patting the spot beside him in invitation for the boy to join him there.

"Okoze." He didn't respond directly to that invitation, but he did come closer to sit nearby. "You're real easy to scare, huh? Thought your eyes were gonna pop outta your head when Medaka-sensei used that jutsu."

"I wasn't expecting it. Does she do that often?"

"Pssh, sometimes." Okoze laughed. "No big deal."

Iruka frowned a little. "You're not afraid of her doing that to you?"

"Nah, it doesn't hurt, it's just a bit annoying. Besides, I'm not scared of anything." And Okoze struck what was obviously his bravest pose as he said that. "That's why all the other kids know I'm the toughest in the whole class."

"They do, huh?" Iruka smiled a little, feeling as though this kind of bravado was familiar ground. "So they know you'll be a strong shinobi one day? Maybe even Mizukage?"

Okoze laughed again, more derisively. "Who'd wanna be Mizukage? That's stupid. You can't do all the fun stuff when you're Mizukage. Like going out and fighting as much as you wanna - the Mizukage doesn't do that."

"...Oh. ...One of the Swordsmen, then?" Iruka offered, searching for a suggestion that would make sense to a boy like this.

"Yeah, that'd be great. You get a cool blade, then, and everybody's scared to fight you on account of knowing you're super strong." Okoze ran a hand through his hair, which was already so untidy that this made very little difference except to change the direction a little bit. "I mean, you might hafta do what the Mizukage says, but that's okay, we'll have a new Mizukage by then."

"You don't like the Mizukage?" Iruka prompted, carefully maintaining a tone of only mild interest.

"Course not! She's soft, Papa says, so weak she'll ruin the village. But somebody'll come along that'll make us all strong again, so strong people like you wouldn't even dare come in here."

"People like me?"

"Yeah. Outsiders. We don't need those, we can be the fiercest shinobi ever without any help from anybody. We just gotta take things back to how they used to be and we'll be fine."

It was unsettling, hearing sentiments like these delivered in the voice of a child far too young to know exactly what he was hoping for. Iruka watched Okoze, feeling more troubled by the moment. It would only take a few adults with opinions like his in each village to seriously endanger the alliance between the villages, if they reached influential positions, and there were always people like that, who would disagree with the way things were going under the belief that the old ways had been better.

"Do you want to kill your classmates?" Iruka asked suddenly.

Okoze recoiled a little. "Huh?"

"You want to take things back to how they used to be. Even in Konoha, we heard about those days. Which of your class would you kill, then, to be a shinobi?" He didn't like asking this kind of question, but if he could just get through to this boy, if he could convince Okoze that the future might be better than the past, then he could feel that he'd begun to make a difference. If he could do this, then the faith both Kakashi and Mei had placed in him to do this job might be justified, even a little. "Don't you have friends who might be in danger if that was how you had to graduate?"

Okoze looked troubled for a moment, and then scowled. "No, the others don't like me. They know I'm tough, but they don't like me, because the Mizukage won't let people just be tough anymore. So people listen to her and then they only like soft stupid people instead of strong ones."

"Really? She fought in the War, you know, against Madara, and she has a Swordsman for a bodyguard. You don't think being strong is important to her?" Only silence answered this, so Iruka pressed on. "Does your class know what you think of them? Maybe they think you hate them and wouldn't mind if they died, and that's why they're not trying to be friends with you."

"So what?" Okoze snapped.

"So maybe you should try to be their friend first? Without acting like their deaths wouldn't make you sad?" Iruka sighed. "Aren't you feeling lonely, like this?" He saw Okoze's eyes widen, just a little. "I'm sure there would be some of the other children who wouldn't mind being your friend if they thought you'd care about them too."

It was a misstep.

"I'm not a kid, I'm a shinobi-in-training! I don't need friends!" And with that declaration, Okoze jumped up, hopped over the edge of the roof, and was gone.

Iruka's shoulders sank. He'd been so hopeful that he could bring Okoze around with a bit of encouragement, but it was clearly not going to be that easy. And now he had to work out what to do about this. Okoze's father was, from what he'd said, a dissenter who wanted the old days back. That kind of thing could break the alliance apart if it flared up into something worse, but if Iruka notified the Mizukage, he might be contributing to the punishment of a child's father, and he didn't know if Okoze had any other parent or family member to support him if things went wrong. He doubted that Mei would have the man killed - she didn't seem like that kind of person, not unless Okoze's father tried to attack her directly - but any punishment the man might face was sure to have some impact upon his ability to provide for his family.

If Okoze went hungry, or could no longer afford to attend the Academy, as a result of this, Iruka knew he'd feel responsible for it. Even if it was someone else's choices that would have done all the actual damage, Iruka would feel like he was responsible for his own part in it by having brought more attention to the situation.

But on the other hand, if Okoze's father turned out to be the sort of man who would enter into a conspiracy to remove the Mizukage, and Iruka said nothing, he'd also be partly culpable for whatever damage that conspiracy caused, having known and not spoken up.

He had a headache, now, and it didn't seem like it was going to go away in a hurry.

_Think, Iruka, think,_ he urged himself, rubbing at his temples with both hands.

Well, it wouldn't help if he jumped in without knowing more, surely. He ought to do what he could for Okoze here in the Academy, and then he could see if Okoze would open up to him a little more. He'd have more information then, and he might be able to encourage Okoze to think better of the mindset he'd been echoing. That would be a good start, if Okoze no longer held to whatever views his father seemed to hold. He was young enough that those were almost certainly not his own fixed opinions, but rather things parroted after hearing them from adults in his life, and if he could be encouraged to question those beliefs, he could become another force for good in the world, instead of a destabilising influence that might tip it back toward all the worst parts of shinobi history.

And those were both weighty labels to set upon a child not yet a ninja, Iruka knew - right now, it would be unfair to decide that Okoze's fate was fixed in just one direction, or that his impact upon history was going to be so dramatic.

Okoze was just a child, still, so... perhaps one of the first steps was to help him to solve a problem that was especially important for a child.

Iruka stood, stretched a little, and left his place upon the roof. It was getting a little late, but tomorrow he would go and talk to the other students, and see what they really thought of Okoze - and if any of them might be encouraged to make a few overtures of friendship. Feeling lonely could change a person in all kinds of ways, not many of them good, but having friends could help a person find something worthwhile in the world, something worth protecting and caring about.

In the end, that might be the most valuable thing that Iruka thought he could help a boy like Okoze to find.


	3. Benthic zone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mei and Iruka both look into a future filled with hard work. The resentments of others show through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long delay, life has rather got in the way.

Okoze was angry. This wasn't exactly new for him - he'd spent a lot of his short life feeling angry, and that didn't seem as though it was going to change anytime soon. Everything always seemed so unfair that anger was the only logical reaction to the world, and it was the best survival strategy he knew. When he was angry, he felt like he could do just about anything, which meant that there was nothing at all to be scared of. When he wasn't angry, other feelings started creeping in, ones he didn't like to think about. They made him feel helpless, at the mercy of things far stronger than him - which was a surefire way to get him angry again, at which point it didn't make him feel quite as bad.

His father was not an angry man. Not anymore. Everyone said it was uncommon for a Kiri-nin with no known connection to the bloodlines that tended to result in fangs to be so susceptible to the frenzies of bloodlust that could drive a shinobi into killing rages and euphoric delight at slaughter, but it was possible, and Okoze's father was an example. His mad smile in battle had no knife-edges, no resemblance to that of a shark, but it was chilling nonetheless, and he'd grown notorious for the way he could shrug off wounds to make even one more kill before the battle could end. The network of scars covering his body were a testament to the way he fought, caring nothing for his own safety, or anything except the next enemy's death.

But he was not an angry man. Mostly, he just seemed… blank. It was as though he wasn't quite present unless he was fighting, and then all of the emotion that had refused to show itself before would come spilling out. His berserk laughter had rung out across countless battlefields, and would probably ring out across countless more.

Okoze had heard all the stories, had seen the awe and dread with which others regarded his father, and he longed to have people look at him the same way. Nobody would ever dare make fun of him then, or treat him like he was just a kid who didn't know anything at all, or tell him he couldn't have things if he wanted them. Nobody would push him around, if they were all afraid that he could kill them just like that, if they made the mistake of getting him mad at them. They wouldn't interfere with him, then. They wouldn't act like he was stupid just because doing sums and reading about history bored him senseless.

And his father… his father would respect him, then, would be proud of him for being stronger and braver than anyone else. If it took rising to the top of all the shinobi in Kirigakure for pride to replace that blank stare, then that's what Okoze would do. And if it took changing Kirigakure, taking it back to how it used to be, for his father to get the battles he wanted, then Okoze would help him do that, too.

Battles were where his father came alive the most, and the Mizukage was turning Kirigakure into a village whose shinobi weren't supposed to fight the way they used to. So she was _stealing_ that life from his father, and he hated her for it. He hated her for deciding that nobody really needed the old ways, and never stopping to ask people if they didn't feel the same way. He hated her for being powerful enough to get away with that, for making herself strong enough to be put in charge and then not letting anybody else get that strong after her.

He hated her because his father hated her, and anything that moved his father to real emotions must be important.

And now the Mizukage had brought in some guy from Konoha? An outsider, in the village, being allowed to see everything and do whatever he liked? That was disgusting. Everybody knew Konoha was full of soft weak people who did soft weak things, and bringing one into Kirigakure would make their village soft and weak as well. The guy really seemed to live up to what everyone knew, too - he'd looked so upset about a jutsu that wasn't even being used on him personally. What kind of person acted like that? Only somebody without the guts to be a real shinobi, surely.

He'd treated Okoze like he was just another kid, too, and Okoze hated that. All that talk about friendship and caring… this guy really was trying to make people weaker. That was probably why Konoha had sent him in the first place; they were soft, but they were sneaky, and they'd probably sent that guy to soften up Kirigakure so they could destroy it.

Well, Okoze wasn't going to fall for that, he decided, kicking a pebble along in front of him as he walked moodily home. He'd stop this guy, this Iruka, somehow, and then Konoha's plans would fall apart, and so would the Mizukage's.

In the distance, he could hear his classmates calling to each other, but he shut them out. They were busy saying goodbye, and see you later, and all sorts of other things, even though they'd all be in the same classroom again tomorrow morning. At least none of them tried that with him anymore, not since one of them had attempted to walk home with him, only to be scared off by Okoze's father. A lot of rumours had gone around the next day, but Okoze had punched enough people that they'd all shut up eventually, and now they just left him alone, which was all he really wanted from them.

He didn't need any of them. They were weaker than him, and they were going to die, sooner or later, so there was no point caring about the fact that they existed right now.

Scowling, Okoze left the noises behind and returned to his house. It wasn't a large place, and it was falling apart around the edges, and he was angry about that, too. If the Mizukage would give his father back the kind of missions he'd done in the old days, they'd have been able to afford to fix up their home. As it was, he had to open the door carefully, so the lock wouldn't fall out when it was moved.

His father wasn't home. That was normal, at least; yesterday he'd been home when Okoze had arrived, and it had startled him a lot. Dumping his schoolbag, Okoze stalked into the kitchen, and looked in the pantry. Some of the bread he'd brought home the other day was still in there. That meant he could make himself a meal if he pulled enough things together, without taking too much of any one thing.

It wouldn't even look like he'd eaten anything at all, if he was careful.

 

* * *

 

It was going to be another long day, Mei thought. She was going to have to listen to more debates, yet again, on how far she could reasonably raise the graduation age at the Academy. The same old topics always seemed to come up - everyone discussing the matter had graduated young, and many of them saw nothing wrong with that. And after the war, Kirigakure's number of shinobi was much smaller than it had been. It would take years to build it back up, maybe even generations before the village was truly expanding again, thanks to all the shinobi who'd died and thus were not having children to replace them in the future.

Faced with that reality, she knew that many of her advisors thought it sheer madness to hold back potential genin from graduation when they could be out doing missions and rising through the ranks to fill the gaps in the village's numbers. Some had even discussed lowering the graduation age instead, but Mei had squashed that idea very firmly.

The days in which a child of nine might be expected to fight and die for the village were over, and must never be allowed to return - and children younger than nine? That was unthinkable. They were just children, and deserved to keep their childhood longer than that, as she had never had a chance to do herself.

Oddly enough, even advisors who did not particularly love Konoha suddenly became keen to recommend things about it if that served their purposes, like arguing that the last Hokage, Tsunade, had graduated at just six, and that the current one, Hatake Kakashi, had been only five years old when he'd become a genin. They seemed less keen to remember that Konoha now tended toward a graduation age of twelve or thirteen, apparently considering this some manner of failing on Konoha's part.

Mei didn't think it was a failing at all. Konoha's genin were still young, yes, but those few more years could make all the difference in their development. That was important, if young shinobi were to have a greater chance of surviving and maturing to adulthood with their bodies and minds both relatively intact.

She'd managed to push the graduation age up to a minimum of ten already, and then to eleven more recently. At some point, she would be able to raise it to twelve, she hoped, without giving too much ground in return. That was what was sure to come up in today's discussions, after all - the subject of exceptions to those rules. They would try to get her to agree that exceptions ought to be made for true prodigies, and she would yet again have to find a way to explain to them that even prodigies were still children, with children's minds, and they ought to remain amongst their peers. It would do Kirigakure no good at all to push its talented children forward to such a degree that they would shatter under the pressure, and never become strong adults who could guide other shinobi in the future.

And at some point in all of this, somebody would probably push her until she lost her temper, again.

It was the way some of them looked at her, as though she was failing to do her part for the village by marrying and having children - and she _wanted_ those things, _longed_ for them so much that she ached with the feeling of something missing, sometimes, but she'd be damned if she'd do it just to fit into what others wanted her to do and be. She still wished for a life like that, but she wished for it for herself, for her own sake, not because some fools thought she would be inadequate without it. And it might have been easier if she hadn't wanted those things, really, so that their absence wouldn't sting and she could reject every suggestion on the subject as pointless, unrelated to her life and her choices, but she wasn't about to start lying to herself now, and pretend she was the kind of woman who was perfectly happy without dreams like those.

(She'd seen herself married, in the Infinite Tsukuyomi, to a good man with a good heart, and she'd been so incredibly happy, but it had been no more than an illusion, one she tried to push to the back of her mind where it wouldn't keep nagging at her.)

None of those things were helpful when it came to making others take her seriously, though. That was a battle she sometimes thought she'd never be done fighting; the enemy was everywhere and constantly gained new reinforcements, while taking up valuable territory in the minds of people she still unfortunately needed to win over if she was to get anything done. They could judge her for being single and childless, and judge her for not wanting to be either of those things, all at the same time. She was too feminine for them, but she'd tried the other way, and people had failed to take her seriously then too. Either she relied too much on her kekkei genkai abilities, or she would have been worth very little without them.

There was no winning with some people, especially once she'd taken steps to discourage casual murder in the village, because that kind of rule had to apply to her too or else it was worthless. All she could do, instead, was make sure they were at least wary enough about her strength that they wouldn't try to take her on directly, and then carry on doing what needed to be done, proving her competence in front of people for whom no proof might ever be enough.

So be it, then; her duty to her village didn't change just because some people in it had foolish opinions about her. She knew her worth, and others were coming to learn it as well.

After everything she'd survived, this was only a very minor obstacle, and one she could overcome. It was nothing compared to the war, or life in the Fourth Mizukage's Kirigakure, where she'd spent so much time hiding what she could do from those who would despise her for the abilities she'd inherited, and hiding her thoughts about how the future ought to be from anyone who might have thought her treasonous. She'd sheltered behind a polite smile and judicious uses of the kinds of violence she now abhorred, because those were the only ways to survive so she could see to it others in the future wouldn't have to do the same thing.

She had known right from the beginning that no part of her road would ever be easy. She was used to that. The world wasn't a kind place, and it would never become one unless there were people willing to grit their teeth, stand up beneath the burden of that unkindness, and actively work to make it better. Mei had vowed to be one of those people, and as time had passed, she'd begun to find others with the will to become something similar.

Well, it was always likely to be one step and one person at a time. She sighed, pushed a few errant strands of hair back into place, and went out to get started on that next step, and the meeting it demanded.

 

* * *

 

Iruka had not slept well, last night. He'd had too much to think about. The documents he'd been given to read hadn't all been current, which one the one hand was a good thing, since it gave him some insight into how Kirigakure's Academy had operated in the past and what kind of influences might be lurking there, but on the other hand meant that he now knew something of how ghastly it had once been, and he wasn't likely to be able to forget that anytime soon.

The Okoze issue had been weighing on his thoughts, too, and he still wasn't entirely sure how he was going to resolve that problem in a way that wasn't bound to hurt somebody along the way. Who to speak to, who to tell, what kind of solutions might work out… he'd weighed those things up time and time again, only to find some flaw in his own plans and have to start all over again with a new plan that would, inevitably, turn out to be every bit as potentially flawed in the last one, albeit in some brand new way each time.

In a way, he thought, this issue had begun to stand as some kind of symbol of all the other overarching issues involved in this mission, a personal face on a piece of the wider problems.

Perhaps, then, he should continue to look at the personal sides of it, for now.

He got himself ready for the day, realising as he got dressed just how much his Konoha ninja clothing must stand out to others here. It couldn't be helped; he was an outsider, that was the whole point, and he would have to win the trust of others from that position or not at all.

At least he was entirely accustomed to putting together his own meals and every other part of looking after himself, so it wasn't as though that part was a shock to his system; he knew some married shinobi had become accustomed to knowing that if they were at home, instead of out in the field, there would be a family waiting to help out. They didn't have to do everything for themselves, but Iruka did. He'd been looking after himself for years now, ever since he'd lost his parents, and he was used to it, even if he did wonder sometimes, seeing the happiness of others, what it must be like to go home to a loving spouse and maybe even children.

It wasn't that he was unhappy, as such, but they had a different kind of happiness, and he was curious about it sometimes, a little wistful about what it seemed to add to their lives. He had friends, and students who were precious to him, but it wasn't quite the same thing.

Well, maybe he'd find out one day. For now, he would do the job in front of him, care about the ones who needed him in the present, and live according to what he felt right, just as he'd always tried to do.

With those thoughts on his mind, he almost got lost on his way to the Academy; the mist was thick this morning and the route was still unfamiliar. An old lady selling buns gave him directions, and he bought two of her buns before he followed those directions, holding the warmth of fresh, hot pastry in his hands to ward off the morning chill. They were tasty, too, he discovered, filled with some manner of heavily spiced fish paste that left extra warmth radiating out from his belly into the rest of him even once he'd finished the journey and come into the Academy.

There was a different class to watch today, and he was impressed to see the way they sparred atop a pool of water; that kind of chakra control exercise wasn't easy to master, and there were plenty of students in Konoha who didn't have it down completely until some point after they'd graduated and become genin. Apparently, Kirigakure's students were held to a higher standard in that regard, which was probably only natural when their homeland consisted of so many islands. Iruka was willing to bet that just about all of them would have learned to swim at quite a young age, too, for that same reason.

Their kenjutsu was already remarkably advanced, too; these children were clearly not deemed ready to graduate, and yet they were already fast on their feet, with a good sense of timing and balance. Of course, everyone knew that Kirigakure's shinobi tended to favour blades, and that their skills in that area tended to be impressive, but that was something one might expect to see in adults; it was a little different, seeing young students who already looked as though they could have cut the average genin to ribbons if they had to.

Iruka frowned a little in thought. Not everything about the Academy was in need of a change, evidently, and he suspected he would be up against a certain amount of opposition if he didn't present his ideas carefully and with a great deal of careful consideration. The Academy produced students of great skill; they would be proud of that, and reluctant to listen to any suggestions that sounded at all as though they might interfere with turning their students into the fearsome warriors for which Kirigakure was well-known.

Ideally, he would be able to find a way to give the students the kindness they needed as children, without hindering their development at all. He would have a better chance of getting his ideas accepted that way, and the students would be all the better for it.

He didn't realise, immediately, that the kenjutsu instructor was looking up at him, until the man called his name, and then he snapped back into awareness.

"Would you care to try your skills against one of the students, Iruka-san?" the man asked, all courtesy. "I'm sure it'd be educational."

Judging by the muffled snickering from the students, though, not all of them were under the impression that they would be the ones getting educated in the process.

There wasn't really any gracious way to say no to an invitation like that, even if it did put Iruka in a difficult position; he didn't want to accidentally hurt a student, but if he held back too much and they managed to succeed against him, they might lose some respect for him that he would very much need if he wanted to persuade anyone of anything here. And he wasn't a kenjutsu expert, himself, so gauging just how far to go with this wasn't going to be easy.

Still, he might lose just as much respect if he refused, so Iruka smiled politely, swung himself over the railing with one hand, and landed neatly on the water. "Thank you, though I'm afraid someone will have to loan me a sword."

A chubby boy with a mop of dark brown hair immediately proffered his sword, gaze fixed avidly on Iruka. "Here?"

"Oh, thank you." Iruka took it, weighing it in his hand, and looked toward the instructor, wondering who the man was going to choose to pit against him.

Apparently, the instructor's choice was a lanky girl, dark-haired and thin-faced, who grinned very cheerfully at Iruka, showing off a mouthful of razor-sharp pointed teeth. It was a startling sight; Iruka had seen a few adults around with teeth like those, but he hadn't come across any children with them yet. They must have been natural, in this girl's case, for her to have them so young, contrary to the speculations he'd heard now and again about tooth-filing. Admittedly, this was Kirigakure, and nothing was completely impossible, even for a child, but those sharp teeth fit together too neatly in the girl's dangerous smile to be anything but the result of having grown in that shape.

"Koduka here will face you," the instructor informed him, and gestured for all of the other students to clear a space for the match.

"Blades only?" Iruka asked, just to check, because there was a cunning look in Koduka's eyes that worried him a little. "No ninjutsu, no other taijutsu?"

"Blades foremost. No ninjutsu. Taijutsu is fine," the instructor clarified cheerily.

"Oh. Thank you." With that, Iruka turned his attention back to his opponent, settling into a ready stance. He couldn't remember if she'd been one of the particularly impressive ones he'd been watching earlier, but it was fairly likely, if she'd been chosen for this.

There was stillness, then, and silence, even once they'd been given the signal to begin. Neither of them moved, waiting for the other to strike first, waiting to see whose patience might crack, or who might spot some infinitesimal opening in the other's defenses.

 _She waits like a grown shinobi_ , Iruka realised suddenly. _She has all the patience and readiness you'd expect from a chūnin or higher, and she hasn't even graduated yet._ It wasn't fear that was keeping Koduka still, he was absolutely certain of that; it was the willingness to wait until the optimal moment to strike. This wasn't the kind of shinobi who would charge in, reckless and screaming; this was the kind who would probably wait for hours, once she was older, just watching her target and waiting for everything to be just right.

He took a few steps, and she responded, the two of them beginning to move slowly in a circle, still watching each other closely. He let his sword dip a little, creating an intentional opening, and yet she still didn't take the bait. She just kept circling, matching him step for step, her stance impeccable all the while.

None of her watching classmates seemed to mistake it for fear, either; there was no jeering or shouting, just a fiercely attentive silence that Iruka found a little unsettling, compared to the way students tended to behave back in Konoha. By now, somebody would at least have tried to cheer her on, if they'd been in Konoha, but here, nobody spoke at all.

And then, suddenly - she wasn't there, and Iruka wheeled to block a slash aimed at his back. _So fast!_ He'd seen her move, but only barely, and she'd given no signs at all that she was about to do it until it was already happening.

Koduka ducked under Iruka's counterstrike, rolled across the water's surface, and parried his next blow even though it nearly drove her down under the water. All the while, she never lost that bright grin, even if it did tighten with concentration now and then. She freed one hand from her sword hilt and used it to push herself up from the water, aiming a kick at Iruka's kneecap that forced him to move back. He could have struck at her legs, perhaps, but she'd timed it well, angling her sword so that his strike slid away along it, and lashing out in that one crucial moment.

She was back on her feet immediately, and pressing the advantage of her speed and agility, so that Iruka quite genuinely had to work to keep her at bay. She didn't have his reach, but she did have a remarkable capacity for evading blows and getting inside Iruka's reach where his longer arms ceased to be as effective.

It was Iruka's sheer strength, in the end, that decided things, as he knocked her sword clean out of her hands, but she'd managed to get some distance again, and even disarmed, she didn't give any impression of having suffered a significant defeat. The instructor called the bout in Iruka's favour, but if it had been a real fight, Koduka might still have been able to do something, even if that was just to make a tactical withdrawal until she could bring reinforcements to bear.

He made sure to praise her for that, in particular, while congratulating her on how well she'd fought; her classmates had applauded only reluctantly upon seeing the result, and Iruka didn't want a girl this incredibly talented to go without the praise she deserved.

He suspected that, given another ten years and some luck, he would almost certainly be able to find Koduka's name on a list of Kirigakure's most respected jōnin, and found he looked forward to that idea. There was always something special about getting to see new prodigies as they began to rise, before they'd become figures of legend for others. He only hoped that the way she graciously congratulated him on his win meant that the world would hear of her in a positive way, rather than a name of fear; he wanted to believe in the best of young shinobi-in-training, even if he knew that it didn't always work out that way.

She was not, however, the one he really needed to talk to now, and so she wasn't the one he sought out while the students from various classes were taking a break to eat. That one was the girl who had warned Okoze to be quiet; she'd clearly been familiar enough with her classmate to want to warn him, and Iruka wanted to know more, so that he could get a bit closer to a solution for the issues surrounding Okoze.

There were undoubtedly a great many children who needed help here, and Iruka hoped he'd be able to do something for as many of them as possible, but he could only help with things he actually knew about. Right now, it was Okoze he was aware of, so that would have to be his priority.

He found the girl he was looking for easily enough; the bright yellow ribbons decorating her twin jet-black braids were distinctive, and she was still wearing them. Iruka approached her, smiling a little. "Excuse me, do you mind if we talk a little? What's your name?"

"…Shari. Uh, okay?" She swallowed the last piece of onigiri from her meal, watching him a little dubiously.

"It's about one of the boys in your class. Okoze?"

Shari rolled her eyes expressively. "Oh, _him_. What's he done now, try to stab you?"

"No, nothing like that. I was hoping you could tell me more about him? I was curious after what I saw the other day…"

"He gets like that whenever people talk about the Mizukage," Shari said, with a shrug. "Medaka-sensei gets real touchy about anybody being disrespectful, but Okoze doesn't care, no matter how anybody punishes him. They've tried practically everything, and it never really stops him. Only thing they haven't done is talk to his father, because everybody knows he's pretty much the same anyway."

"His father?" Iruka asked, curiously.

"Yeah. He's not nice. Nobody wants to talk to him. Okoze's not smart or he would've run away by now, even having no home at all would be better than what he's got." Shari appeared to be warming to her topic, relishing the chance to deliver this information to someone who didn't already know all of it. "Okoze got those scars training with his father, from what we all heard - who'd slice up his own kid's face like that? You'd have to be a really bad person to do that. Nobody goes to Okoze's house - nobody wants to, but he doesn't invite anybody there either. So he's always on his own, and he hasn't got any friends."

That was... a lot of different issues, all delivered together, and Iruka was honestly not sure which of them to address first. The thing that came to the surface of its own accord, though, was, "His own father did that?"

"Yup! That guy's a claw-fighter - you know, those clawed gauntlets? My mother say's he's really bloodthirsty, the kind of guy that wants to charge right into a fight and rip somebody apart with the claws." Shari wrinkled her nose. "Plenty of people use those things sometimes, but not all of them are, you know... creepy intense about it."

"What's his name, do you know?"

"Hirami Kasago," Shari said, after a long pause, clearly having had to think about this.

Iruka nodded, filed that name away for later thought, and then asked her, "Do you think there's anyone who would like to be Okoze's friend? If he was nicer to people, say?"

There was a snort from Shari that sounded very much as though she was trying not to laugh. "If he was nicer to people, he wouldn't be Okoze. He doesn't like anybody, and nobody likes him, and anyone who ends up on a team with him better watch their back, because he's just plain nasty."

"But you tried to warn him, when he was about to get in trouble, didn't you?"

Shari rolled her eyes. "Sure, but I might as well have saved my breath."

"You didn't, though." Iruka kept his voice gentle, but refused to give up on this point. "Why did you warn him, if you don't like him?"

Fidgeting and looking away, Shari scowled. "I owe him one after he punched a guy that kept picking on me, okay? I thought he was okay after that, but he just gets to be more and more of a jerk every year. By the time we graduate he'll be even more awful."

"I hope not. I've come here to help all of you, and that includes boys like Okoze."

"That's never gonna work, you know that, right?"

"Oh, I don't know." Iruka smiled. "There was a boy in my classes back in Konoha who was always loud and didn't like to listen to what teachers told him, and a lot of people thought he was a pain back then, but he just needed somebody to take a little time and believe in him, and he turned out to be quite the hero."

Shari still seemed unconvinced, though, and Iruka let her get back to her friends, for what little remained of their break. She'd given him even more to think about, at least.

He knew, now, the name of a man whose ideas regarding who should be in charge in Kirigakure might be slipping closer to what this village would consider to be treason, and he knew that the man in question was reputed to be very dangerous - even to the point of leaving significant scars on his son's face during whatever training they might have been doing. Those were worrying details to have, and he was beginning to feel as though intervening might be in Okoze's best interests.

There was also the part where restoring Okoze's bonds to others his own age was looking more and more as though it would be a prolonged and complicated task, more difficult than he'd anticipated. After a certain point, he thought, a person's disaffection with others might have become so severe, so complete, that effecting some manner of reconnection would require a phenomenal amount of intervention.

He was not, however, going to give up.

 

* * *

 

The only trouble with Iruka, really, was that he simply didn't understand, Medaka thought,. He was sitting in on her classes again, taking in all of the classroom dynamics with a bright and interested air, and he was polite, well-spoken, easy on the eyes, knowledgeable about a lot of things... but he didn't understand.

Things had always been different in Kirigakure. This wasn't Konoha, where a careless tongue had a higher chance of staying in its owner's mouth; this was Kiri, where treasonous speech had always been answered harshly, to prevent yet more outbreaks of defiance against the Mizukage.

Not all of that violence was reserved for the actual perpetrator, either. Oh, these days the friends and family of a renegade probably expected a few sharp questions, but they were likely to return alive and with all of their limbs intact afterwards. It had been worse in the old days. There had been times where hearing treasonous speech and failing to immediately denounce it, respond to it violently, or both, meant that one might be under intense suspicion of sharing those thoughts.

They hadn't spared children such scrutiny, either, if one could have called the young people of that era children.

As far as Medaka was concerned, she'd ceased to be a child the day she'd entered the Academy. She'd had to.

The children she taught now weren't like that; they were louder, more careless, and sometimes hearing their foolish and dangerous remarks still made her scars ache with the echo of remembered pain.

Umino Iruka was here to change things, apparently, but he clearly didn't realise that the Academy had changed already, not always in ways that would serve its students well when it came to turning out skilled shinobi who were ready for all of the hardships of life as a ninja. Not all of them would survive, of course, but out of those who'd successfully graduated, a little stern treatment while in school might go some way toward preventing much more unpleasant treatment once they'd been recognised as ready to bear the full weight of responsibility for their actions while serving the village.

As far as Medaka knew, most of her fellow instructors here agreed with her; Iruka was to be humoured and given whatever access he requested to their classrooms, but under no circumstances would they allow him to make any change they couldn't see the benefits of. Perhaps he had a few decent ideas, like some improvements for the memorisation techniques taught to students, and in that case they'd happily take his advice, but if he wanted to go around changing things to be more like Konoha, he was going to find that a much harder road than expected.


	4. Demersal zone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iruka and a friend try to convince people that change is necessary. A number of others, by contrast, have some very different changes in mind.

Iruka had, yet again, failed to sleep well last night, and he had the feeling he wasn't going to sleep well tonight, either. He'd been up well into the night sorting through more of the information he'd been putting together about the Academy's past and its training methods, and which of its tactics might be considered effective, versus which ones were simply cruel beyond any reasonable boundary.

Somewhere in there had been a very old guideline for acceptable punishments, and just reading it had made him wish he hadn't eaten his dinner. It had been on his mind even when he'd tried to sleep, too, plaguing his dreams with thoughts of too-small figures contorted into positions of terrible suffering. He'd woken repeatedly in the night, shuddering and sweating, and eventually he'd given up on sleep entirely.

How was he supposed to fix something like this? He was just one man, and a foreigner at that, trying to speak against a history filled with bloodshed so ancient it had become a tradition in its own right. He'd seen the looks some of the teachers were trading, too, of polite skepticism, and less-polite outright disbelief when they thought he wasn't looking.

Asking them for help was looking more and more like an exercise in futility, and their students already seemed to agree with it all, even though they were still the ones on the receiving end of that harsh training.

Iruka buried his head in his hands, feeling creeping tendrils of despair steal into his thoughts. Kakashi had been far too optmistic, thinking Iruka the right man for this job; surely, the right man for the job would already have thought of a plan of action by now?

Who was he supposed to turn to, here?

He couldn't trouble the Mizukage, not when she was so busy, not when that would be tantamount to admitting he'd failed to live up to her hopes, and from what he'd been hearing about families like Okoze's, looking for help elsewhere might put him in touch with people who were already toying with the thought of treason, and who would not look kindly upon him in any case.

He needed somebody with reason to want the Mizukage's wishes to be carried out, who would be inclined to agree about the need for changes to the Academy, and he hadn't been here long enough to know who that might be.

Rubbing at his temples, Iruka sifted through the mental list of all the people he'd met here so far. He sat up, quite suddenly, as a name popped into his head.

What about Chōjūrō?

The man had seemed quite loyal to the Mizukage, nice enough, with enough humility that he hadn't been afraid to apologise to a stranger from another village for an accident, and as a Swordsman he'd have to be quite capable, surely? It wouldn't be like bothering the Mizukage herself; Chōjūrō was there precisely to handle things for her, and he'd be able to advise Iruka of where to go from here.

With that in mind, Iruka readied himself for the day hastily, opting not to go to the Academy this time. Instead, he made his way to the Mizukage's office, and let a sleepy-looking clerk know that he'd appreciate the chance to speak to Chōjūrō as soon as possible.

It didn't take long, after that, for Chōjūrō to turn up, looking decidedly curious, and much friendlier than any number of the faces that Iruka had been seeing over the last couple of days, which already lifted his sagging spirits.

"Thank you for coming down to see me," he said, as Chōjūrō drew nearer. "I wanted to speak to you about the reason that Mizukage-sama brought me here - do you know of somewhere we could go to talk?"

Chōjūrō nodded. "There's a small conference room that's always empty at this time of day," he volunteered, and led the way there, with Iruka trailing after him, feeling much more hopeful now than he had been when he'd got up this morning.

Sitting down, the door closed behind them, he outlined the things he'd been hoping to do for the Academy, though he had to think for a moment about how to broach the subject of the difficulties he'd been having.

"I don't think everybody is all that enthusiastic about the changes," he said, at last. "Some of the students seem to think it's ridiculous that I'd come here at all, and some of the teachers... I think they prefer the way they're already doing things to anything I might suggest for them to do. I know I'm not from here, so people are reluctant to listen to me, but I thought maybe you might be able to help me with this? You know more about the way things are here, and the way things used to be, after all, and this is your home, so people might listen to you better."

There was a long pause, before Chōjūrō said, a little sheepishly, "Not everybody will be eager to listen to me, either. Some of them think I'm a little... soft. Mizukage-sama's former aide used to say that people from the newer generation, like me, weren't really as strong as people used to be." He met Iruka's eyes, and Iruka saw, quite suddenly, the determination beneath that air of uncertainty that seemed to cover him. There was strength there, inner strength, underneath the surface layers of awkwardness and shyness. "But I saw the way things used to be, too, and Mizukage-sama is right, it has to change. So many terrible things happened to so many people back then. A lot of people left the village, and not all of them were the normal kind of traitor, some of them were just really scared that they'd be the next ones to die, or their families might be."

"You stayed," Iruka pointed out, and Chōjūrō nodded.

"I was still pretty young, and my sensei taught me a lot about how to keep my head down and keep out of trouble, until he died." A little shrug accompanied those words. "I think leaving scared me even more than staying did, too - nobody wants to be tracked down by the hunter-nin." Chōjūrō smiled, then. "And then Godaime-sama took over, and showed us all that there could be something better. She's been the hope of the village ever since, the one telling us we don't have to live like that anymore, and we don't have to be afraid anymore."

Put like that, Terumī Mei sounded like a miracle, and Iruka wondered what could have inspired her to believe in that brighter future amidst so much gloom, so that she could in turn inspire others. "And you've been following her ever since. But... not everybody believes in that hope, do they? I've heard of some people who would want things to go back to the way they used to be."

Another nod, more reluctant this time, answered him. "There are still some people who aren't really handling the change to peace all that well. Are there some of those getting in the way of what you're trying to do?"

It was Iruka's turn to nod, with just as much reluctance as Chōjūrō. He still didn't like to complain that he couldn't handle some part of this, or think about how revealing this would affect the people he was talking about, but he was running out of choices now, and what had he sought out Chōjūrō for, if not to help him with this problem? "I think some of the teachers are afraid changing the system will make the students weaker - and I think some of the students think so, too."

"You said they thought it was ridiculous..."

"Yes. But it's not just that. I think... some of their parents might believe that the Mizukage is doing things the wrong way - not just in sending me in to change things, but in general." Iruka looked away for a moment, mentally apologising to Okoze. "I've heard one of them talk about the idea of a new Mizukage, and that's something he's surely heard at home. I'm worried about what will happen to him - but the results if the people he knows actually try to put that idea into action would be even worse."

Chōjūrō's eyes widened. "There have been coup attempts in Kirigakure before. We need to deal with this before it can turn into another one."

"You think it really will?"

"It matches a few things we'd been hearing already, yes." And Chōjūrō looked entirely professional now, almost brisk as he answered Iruka's question. "Did you get a name? We won't do anything without investigating," Chōjūrō assured him, "but that will tell us who to investigate."

"...Hirami Kasago."

"...Oh. Yes, he has a reputation. He's not on active duty right now, because there were some nasty rumours about his being very rough with civilians, and we were still looking into that."

Iruka winced. Given what he'd already heard, his imagination was furnishing him with all kinds of unpleasant thoughts about what 'rough with civilians' might entail, by Kirigakure standards. Anything severe enough to force a man to stand down from active shinobi duties must have been very bad indeed, and he was glad that Chōjūrō had declined to provide him with the actual specifics.

"Is he married, do you know?" Iruka asked at last.

"I don't think so."

That made things a little more difficult, then. If Kasago was Okoze's sole parent, then if he were to be arrested, Okoze would be left without any parents at all, and life was not kind to boys without parents, as Iruka knew well enough already. Still, given what he'd already heard about Hirami Kasago, it was possible that life wasn't any kinder for Okoze even with a parent around - and, in fact, that being removed from proximity to his father would be an improvement in his living conditions.

Iruka mulled over this idea a little longer before he said, "I don't think the teachers are against the Mizukage, though - they just don't like what I represent."

"Do you want me to come with you to talk to them?" Chōjūrō offered.

"Thank you, that might help. You can speak to them from the perspective of someone who's not an outsider, so they might actually listen to you."

"I hope so. We really need this."

They parted on that note, with promises to meet at the Academy two days hence, which would give Iruka time to put his recommendations in order to present to the teachers. He was certain he could create a framework of ideas in that time that he could show them all, and with Chōjūrō there to back him up, the teachers might actually listen instead of rejecting his ideas out of hand. From there, if they had objections they could talk about them, like reasonable adults, and work out what needed to be changed, and what really ought to stay. It wasn't as though everything about their Academy needed to change, after all; Kirigakure had been turning out strong shinobi for nigh as long as Konoha had, so not all of their methods were wrong.

It was only the part where those strong shinobi also tended to be emotionally deadened, cold killers who had seen countless comrades die and no longer understood the concept of hope that really needed to be fixed.

 

* * *

 

Mei sighed. It had been a long and trying day already, and it looked as though it was going to get worse. She eyed the paper in front of her.

It was unusual for Chōjūrō to present her with anything this direct, but here it was, a form for her to sign off on to authorise an in-depth investigation into one of Kirigakure's citizens.

She'd heard this name before, and had personally given the approval for his suspension from duty while the rumours of his conduct in the field were investigated, but the results of that matter hadn't even come in yet, and here was a request for a second investigation?

"Has this... Kasago... done something new I should be aware of?" she asked, looking up at Chōjūrō.

He stood before her desk, more at ease than he had once been, there. Once, he'd been so easily flustered, but now he was maturing. She liked that; it made her hope that she had already found her successor, for when the time finally came to select the next Mizukage. And it would be her making that selection, she hoped; she would step down, when the time was right, and still be here to offer advice and support during that transition period.

It would be the first time that a Mizukage had voluntarily surrendered power before death.

"We've heard that he might have been talking about the idea of a new Mizukage, along the lines of the ideals some of the traditionalists have," Chōjūrō said, unknowingly matching his words to her current train of thought.

The traditionalists, though, weren't going to want a peaceful transfer of power. She knew that there were still some in the village who'd love to see her violently overthrown, made an example of to ensure nobody with similar aspirations would ever challenge them again. They were, as yet, too fearful of her strength to face her openly, and so most of them seemed to content themselves with muttering darkly about how much better things would be if she were gone, and how things just weren't like the old days anymore.

That could change, though; there was always the possibility that some of them might grow bold enough to strike, and that wouldn't end well for anyone. Far better, really, that they be watched when the muttering grew loud enough and prevented from making any actual attempts to carry out their goals. It would lower the risk of people getting hurt, that way, and the punishments for conspiracy to commit treason were a little lighter than those for actually committing it, so it was far kinder for them if they were dealt with before their deeds could incur that heavier penalty.

Fiddling thoughtfully with a lock of her hair, Mei stared down at the form on the desk once more. "Where did you hear this?" she asked, glancing up at Chōjūrō again.

"Konoha's Umino Iruka, the one trying to reform the Academy for you? He told me he'd heard things from Kasago's son that suggest Kasago has been discussing these things at home frequently enough to make an impression."

That left a sour taste in Mei's mouth. It wasn't the part about Iruka - no, she was glad that he'd told Chōjūrō, if he'd heard something so worrying. It was the notion that Hirami Kasago, not content with sharing his bitterness with other traditionalists his own age, might be attempting to instill that same poison in his son. The whole point of all these struggles was to offer Kirigakure's children a new future, one not marked by the suffering and bitterness of the past, where their fresh mindsets could build a world of their own. Even Mei couldn't hope to imagine what shape that could be - she knew well enough that she too was a product of the dark past they were trying to move on from, and so, even with all of her hopes for the future, she knew that there must surely be things that were beyond her imagination, things that the next generation would have to put into action for themselves.

They could only get there, though, if they were given the chance to dream their own dreams, without being tainted by old grudges that would limit them to the old ways of thinking. The world had changed, and those old ways were no longer right for the way things were now, let alone the way things would be as time continued to pass; by chaining the young to that past, people like Kasago would be robbing them of their future and condemning them, ultimately, to failure.

Even one child's life wasted on that kind of thing was one too many, Mei thought.

She sighed, and signed the form in front of her. If Chōjūrō was right, this man had to be stopped, as soon as possible.

"Thank Iruka-san for me, please? For bringing this to our attention?"

"Yes, Mizukage-sama."

 

* * *

 

"Who really needs her anyway?" The man's voice was a little too loud, and his companions shushed him hastily. "We c'n find a better Mizukage than that," he continued, more quietly.

"She did fight in the war," the thin man beside him pointed out, tugging restlessly at the tip of his many times broken nose. "A lot of people respect her for what she did then, so we'd have public opinion against us if we tried to suggest another Mizukage. If we still had somebody like Ao around, he'd be a good pick, but after what happened to him... there's not many choices left."

"He was traditional, but he followed her anyway," the louder man grumbled, his huge black beard bristling as he spoke. "He'd never have let us replace her. Now, Ganryū..."

"Pssh. Ganryū used to think right, but not anymore. Pity. Ever since Yosuga Pass he's been a symbol we coulda used."

They traded names, back and forth, lamenting the deaths of many and the defection to Mei's line of thought of others. Behind them, the third man in their little group said nothing, his heavily-scarred face impassive.

At last, the bearded man looked back over his shoulder. "What d'you think, Kasago?"

Kasago blinked slowly, and replied in a voice like cloth rubbed thin on gravel, as though unused to the act of speaking. "Just kill her. People that won't oppose her alive'll walk all over her corpse for power."

The other two fell silent, intimidated by such a blunt proclamation. They glanced around nervously, searching the misty street for signs of anyone who might have overheard. The thin man pointed to the fountain nearby, whose noise would doubtless have covered their words, and both of them relaxed a little.

"Come on, Kasago," the thin man said, with a quiet, shaky little laugh, "you can't just say things like that out in the open, people will hear you."

"Anyone who hears me can do whatever they like about that." Kasago's words were delivered without any apparent emotion whatsoever, and the other two looked nervous all over again.

"Save it for the meeting, maybe?" the thin man suggested. "There'll be a few of us getting together next week, away from prying eyes."

"Fine." Kasago fell silent again, and kept walking.

His two companions traded looks of evident relief behind his back. Getting Kasago to confine his opinions to meetings would ensure that no stray listeners would report them all to the Anbu. It would also ensure that there were a whole lot of other people around for backup if anyone had to disagree with the man, and right now they honestly couldn't say which of these things was more important to them.

Their words of dissent had ended for this evening; they walked on in a morose silence, the incongruously merry splashing of the fountain fading away behind them as the mist closed over them, rendering them invisible in the gloom.

 

* * *

 

With the promise of real, tangible help in his efforts, Iruka had managed a decent night's sleep at last, and he was beginning to feel as though his old optimism was returning again. It was a good feeling. He didn't like that sense of despair - of course, nobody would, but the sensation had been so foreign to him that it had hit him even harder than it might have someone more accustomed to dealing with it.

He was not, by nature, a pessimistic person, and it was a relief to be rid of the gloomy mood that had been turning him into one.

Chōjūrō would supply the insight that he was lacking, and together, they would get through to the Academy's teachers, he told himself, and willed himself to believe that it was true. If he was positive about it, if he had confidence in success, he'd be a thousand times more convincing than if he went into this with doubts that others could pick up on.

It was not, however, Chōjūrō who awaited him outside the apartment he was using, but someone smaller, younger, whose appearance made Iruka do a slight double take. If he'd been told that Kakashi had engaged in an indiscretion in the Land of Water, some years ago, Iruka might have been inclined to believe it while looking at this young man. True, his hair hung down instead of sticking up wildly, and he used bandages instead of a mask to cover the lower half of his face... but the hair was the right colour, and there was something about the eyes that really did bring to mind Kakashi.

"I've been sent to bring you to the meeting, if you're ready."

"Oh, thank you. What's your name?" Iruka asked, checking to be sure that he had all of the paperwork he was going to need.

"Ikeno Kamakiri. The meeting starts in an hour."

Iruka wondered, for a moment, why he'd been notified a full hour in advance, when it took fifteen minutes at most to get to the Academy from here, but realised that Chōjūrō must have been leaving room for any unexpected delays, like Iruka oversleeping or not having prepared everything in time.

Fortunately, this wasn't the case.

"We're meeting at the Academy?" he asked, just to check.

Kamakiri nodded. "In the teachers' lounge."

"Thank you, I suppose we'd better get going, then." After all, he thought, Chōjūrō might also want to speak to him and further coordinate their strategy before things began.

They made their way down to the street, and Iruka shifted restlessly, an odd prickling sensation between his shoulderblades telling him that he was being watched. He couldn't pick up any killing intent directed at him, though, so either the person was not currently bent upon his destruction, or they were too far away to act immediately. Casually, he paused, reaching up to adjust his ponytail, and let his gaze drift across the faces of the buildings.

There - was that the wind, or had someone pulled a curtain across to conceal themself? With a certain amount of discomfort, he noted that the window in question wasn't far from where he estimated his own windows to be. He made a mental note to be very careful when coming back this evening, and to make sure the windows were well-locked when he went to bed tonight. Whoever this was might turn out to be harmless, but Iruka had decided that he'd prefer not to find out they weren't around the time they came in through his window while he was sleeping.

With one last tug on his ponytail, Iruka smiled apologetically at Kamakiri, and resumed his walk toward the Academy. He didn't tarry any further; there were people along the way that he'd already come to know, but he called greetings to them in passing today, without stopping for anything more than that.

_Who was it?_ With a certain amount of frustration, he realised that his thoughts were still caught up in the idea of the unknown watcher he'd detected. _Some ally of Okoze's father? Someone keeping an eye on me on behalf of the Mizukage's office? Just a curious neighbour?_

He couldn't afford to keep thinking about that, not with such a crucial meeting coming up. Resolutely, Iruka forced himself to review everything he knew he'd written down, page by page, in his head. He had to keep his mind on the task at hand; this was, after all, one of the most crucial parts of this entire mission, and if he failed here, he suspected that he'd never get another chance as good as this. A failed argument would only prejudice the teachers against his ideas even further, and from there it would be an uphill struggle to get them to even consider listening to him again.

They didn't have to accept all of it right away, of course; some sense of neutrality, of at least being prepared to consider that he might have a point would be a step in the right direction, and he'd settle for that for now. He didn't think that was too much to ask, too greedy or too optimistic under the circumstances.

They were good arguments, too, he was sure of it. They'd better be, after how hard he'd worked on them.

This had to work.

Chōjūrō was waiting fir him outside the Academy; he thanked Kamakiri and let him go on his way, leaving the two of them alone there.

"I have everything here if you want to look at it," Iruka said, holding out his folder. "Perhaps that'll help us coordinate our arguments?"

There was a nod from Chōjūrō, who took the folder and led him inside, finding a quiet spot out of the way to sit and read through the pages Iruka had assembled. He was nodding slightly as he read, which Iruka took as a good sign.

"These will work well with what I'm going to tell them," Chōjūrō said, with a smile. "It must have been hard to get some of these statistics, but I think they'll be worth it."

It had been hard, that was true; accessing Kirigakure's records as an outsider would have been completely impossible, if not for the Mizukage's orders, which had been the one saving grace while speaking to people accustomed to guarding the village's secrets as dearly as their own lives. He'd seen clerks go from almost hostile to wary to only mildly resentful once they'd realised that he was doing the bidding of the Mizukage; if they'd still objected to his being permitted to read these things, they'd kept their objections to themselves at that point.

"I included a little on the next page about how Konoha does things, if you'd like to take a look, and what we've found have been the most successful teaching methods."

Obligingly, Chōjūrō flipped to the next page, and read through it quickly. "I can't see them agreeing to all of this," he said thoughtfully, "but some of it is bound to convince them."

"I hope so."

They traded somewhat nervous smiles, sharing without words their mutual uncertainties about how the teachers of Kirigakure's Academy would respond in the coming meeting. It could, perhaps, have been demoralising to discover that Chōjūrō was also not entirely confident here, but in its own strange way it was heartening for Iruka; they were in the same boat here and the sense of sharing his plight with someone who knew exactly how he felt was more encouraging than any bravado that Chōjūrō might have mustered.

They talked, and read, and paced, and then there was no more time for any of that, and they had to go into the teachers' lounge, where the staff of the Academy were waiting for them.

Iruka knew the names of many already; others, he knew by sight, at least, though there were still some who were unfamiliar to him, and those were the ones eyeing him with the most mistrust. Had they been deliberately avoiding coming into contact with him? Whether they had or not, their only exposure to his ideas thus far would have been through whatever their colleagues had told them, and that wasn't likely to have painted a very flattering picture for them.

Those, then, were the ones he had to convince, even more than the others who might have spent time around him and been given some inkling of his sincerity through past meetings.

For now, though, it was Chōjūrō's turn to speak, and all Iruka could really do was listen, and wait his turn.

"Thanks for coming. You, ah... already know why we're here." Chōjūrō didn't start out with any real strength in his voice, and Iruka felt a little concerned. "I'm going to tell you about something I remember. That's not all of it, but... it's important." Chōjūrō scratched at his cheek, and adjusted his glasses. "I'm a Swordsman now. It wasn't easy to get here, but here I am. There used to be seven of us, we all know that, but now..." He shook his head. "Some died in the wars, of course. But some of them... something broke in them, and they left, taking their blades with them. There are probably some of you who'd rather any of them were still standing here instead of me, but they're gone. Do you know why? Because of what this village used to be. I talked to someone who read Hoshigaki Kisame's mind, right before he died, someone from Konoha, who gave me the answer to something we'd wondered about for so long." He took a long, slow breath, and let it out again just as slowly. "He gave up on this village after being used to kill other Kirigakure shinobi. That's what broke everything he believed in, all the reasons he'd fought for this village. Because we - Kirigakure - asked him to kill his own comrades. We lost the strongest wielder of Samehada the village has ever known, by making him cover his hands in the blood of people he should have been fighting beside."

There was silence from the teachers. Evidently, just about all of them remembered Kisame, and Iruka suspected that Chōjūrō had been correct in saying they might have preferred Kisame to Chōjūrō.

"Momochi Zabuza... the reason the Academy's graduation changed. The reason shinobi from my generation didn't have to do what our seniors did. He fled after a failed coup, taking with him one of the last known members of a clan this country nearly exterminated for their kekkei genkai. He was strong, but that wasn't enough. He couldn't stand to live here anymore, the way things used to be. So we lost him. We lost a lot of others, too - the ones that gave up and died, the ones that ran away, the ones that disappeared and were never seen again because they crossed the old Mizukage."

It might have been Iruka's imagination, but he thought he saw a barely-suppressed flinch rock Medaka, the woman with the burn-scarred hand, at this last part of Chōjūrō's speech. _That reached her,_ he thought, though he took no pleasure in the certainty that it had caused her to recall painful memories.

"The names people remember are just the ones who survived long enough to get that far. How many did we lose before that? How many specialists who could've made Kirigakure even stronger died during the graduation, just because the things they would've been good at take longer to develop?" Chōjūrō was looking at one man in particular, a gaunt fellow who kept a crutch close by his hand at all times. "Medics take a long time to train, and not all of them are ready to fight when they're only young."

At this, Iruka nodded, and spoke up at last. "You know the name of Haruno Sakura, perhaps? Tsunade-sama's pupil? She is a medical ninja of great skill, now, but in the Academy her physical skills did not stand out." He gave a wry smile. "Even the strongest ninja of this age, Uzumaki Naruto, failed our graduation test more than once. But he kept trying, over and over." He didn't need to say the rest - it hung unspoken in the air between them all. If Naruto had perished in those early days, before his true strength had shone through, the world would have stood helpless in the face of the dangers that had overtaken it not so long ago.

"That's all well and good," commented an elderly woman, whose stare was hard as emeralds, and colder than those stones by far, "but students here no longer die for the sake of graduation. We have already changed. Why are you here to say that isn't enough?"

"Because they don't die. That's _all_." Chōjūrō's voice was stronger now. "That's all that can be said about them, that they don't die during the graduation. What that doesn't say is how many get so broken down that they can't even bring themselves to try again, or which ones come out the other side so mixed up in their heads they just die later, or turn on their comrades because they're so afraid of being weak that they can't even let their guard down enough to stand beside people they should be able to trust." His jaw set, stubbornly, and he stared at the assembled teachers. "Out of my class... half never graduated. A third of the ones that did were dead or accused of some kind of crime in the first five years. That's not the kind of successful class anybody should be proud of teaching."

"A few weaklings, here and there," began the elderly woman who'd spoken before, dismissively, but Chōjūrō cut her off before she could continue.

"Those weren't weaklings. The top student from my class, the one our sensei said would be the best out of all of us? Killed the second-best student in some stupid little fight over... I don't even know. Nobody knows why. He was executed, and never said why they fought. I wasn't the best. I wasn't the one any of you said was bound to succeed. But if the ones you predicted the most success from turned out like that... maybe you're judging your students according to the wrong sorts of things? Maybe students aren't learning things that'll let them have the long, successful shinobi careers they're supposed to have?"

This was where Iruka's data really paid off. He stood back up, and began to read out some of the statistics he'd collected, about which students had excelled at the Academy, and which ones had gone on to succeed thereafter. Names and numbers piled on top of one another, sketching out the grim truth of the pattern he'd found; the students who'd seemed the most promising by the standards of the Academy had, all too often, been the ones who'd succumbed to violent impulses thereafter, with terrible consequences. Arrests, executions, deaths in fights that should never have taken place... and some who had simply disappeared as though they'd never existed at all. It was the lesser students, those who had laboured under predictions of failure, who had survived for longer, and if they had since died, it had been under honourable circumstances, unlike their much-vaunted peers.

The statistics told their own story here, one that echoed much of what Chōjūrō had said; by the standards of the Academy, those who should have been the greatest were not, once they had graduated and entered the wider world.

Iruka could see those facts sinking in for many of the teachers before him. Some looked angry, others deeply troubled, and in one or two faces he saw open regret. Judging this to be the best moment he would possibly get, he drew some of the papers from the very bottom of the gathered stack.

"There are ideas, here, for how to change the methods being used to teach the students. New metrics of judgement for the standards students ought to be upholding. New guidelines regarding what sort of punishments are appropriate to use on students, depending on the severity of their actions. I don't want to take away the strength of your students. I just want to make sure they live on to use that strength well, in service to their village. Kirigakure has lost enough already - all the villages have, after the war. It'll be a long time before the numbers recover, in any village. We all know that. But the people who are going to rebuild the strength of the villages are the children who are learning now and in the future how to be shinobi. That's why Mizukage-sama sent for me - not to be your enemy, just to help you, for the strength of your village, and for the good of its children." Iruka looked from face to face, trying to keep his composure. He wasn't really one for speeches, but he'd spent some time trying to think of what to say here, how to convince all of these people that they ought to listen to him.

He began to pass out copies of the new educational plan. "If you've got questions about this, or ideas on how to improve it further, we can talk it over. If I've missed anything, please do bring it to my attention. I know how important this is, and I want it to be right. That's why I need the help that all of you can give me."

Some took the papers with greater reluctance than others, but they all took them, and with a few polite expressions of gratitude to all for attending, the meeting ended.

Iruka practically collapsed into a chair once the teachers were gone, and smiled weakly at Chōjūrō. "Thanks for helping. I guess from here we just see what happens when they've had a chance to read through those papers and think them over."

Chōjūrō nodded. "I hope they do decide to come on board with your ideas. The more of them that are convinced, the more they'll convince the others. Mizukage-sama will be pleased with what we've done here today. Ah -" Suddenly, he looked a little sheepish, and a little less like the confident, steady speaker he'd become for a little while during the meeting. "Could I please get a copy of the education plan, too? Mizukage-sama will want to read it herself."

"Of course, here." Iruka handed it over. "I hope she'll approve."

"I think she will. Do you want to come and eat with me?" Chōjūrō coughed, and laughed awkwardly. "I didn't eat before coming to this meeting."

Iruka managed not to laugh, and only smiled. "That would be nice."

They made their way out of the Academy, trading stories of people they'd known and things they'd seen, and Iruka could only conclude that he'd found his first true friend in this place. Already, it looked less foreign now, with a friend beside him.

 

* * *

 

He had been teaching here for so long. The old man scowled down at the papers in his hand, brooding over the travesty of judgement that had permitted some young scut from another village to come strolling in here and tell them their methods weren't working.

What did it matter, if a few frail souls weren't strong enough to hold out under pressure? The ones that did last were all the more glorious when compared to the failures. It was only natural for the best to rise, and the flawed to fall apart when put to the test.

The Swordsmen of old would have laughed themselves sick to see the miserable whining brat who claimed their title now, he thought bitterly. He ought to know; he'd taught some of them personally. Their memory deserved better than to be trodden into the muck by some inadequate inheritor of that great name, some disloyal brat who'd support a foreigner over the ways of his own people. Why, the boy's very smile was a mockery of every single shinobi with those teeth like blades who'd snarled their defiance at a world that would give Kirigakure only what it had the strength to take by force.

This was something the village could only endure for so long. It had been insulted enough already, and if nothing was done, new insults would only be piled onto old ones, raising a twisted mass of ignominy into the sky.

Fortunately, not everyone in the village had been subverted by the soft words of outsiders.

He knew people who would look at these papers as the outrage they truly were, people who would share his anger.

People who might do something about it.

Drawing his coat more tightly about his body, the old man hurried away. The day was clear and bright, thus far, but that would change soon enough.

The mist would come back, as it always did, to cover everything, and then he could seek out suitable companions, hidden from prying eyes.

He could wait that long, at least, to do what had to be done for the sake of the village.


End file.
